Abstract
Is love predictable in its choices? Linear Determinism, Randomness or Complexity? By applying theoretical coordinates of current sociological interpretations of intimacy and conceptual categories of New General System Theory, the paper reflects on one-factor and linear determinism implicitly underlying mate selection processes in Structural Coupling Theory and its implications for Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Assuming personality structure as the predictor of partner choice as well as victimization risk, SCT circumscribes victimization risk just to one category of women (insecure/avoidant women coupling with ambivalent partners). We propose that adaptive complex system and non-banal machine concepts are more effective to understand the mate selection process than linear deterministic approach, which appears too mechanistic for a process that exhibits an inextricable dimension of uncertainty and unpredictability. Research results on a sample of 100 victims of IPV do not corroborate the linear one-factor determinism underlying Structural Coupling Theory neither its implications. Rather they go in the direction of Complexity.
Highlights
We propose that adaptive complex system and non-banal machine concepts are more effective to understand the mate selection process than linear deterministic approach, which appears too mechanistic for a process that exhibits an inextricable dimension of uncertainty and unpredictability
We propose that adaptive complex system and non-banal machine concepts are more effective to understand the mate selection process than linear deterministic approach, which appears too mechanistic for a process that shows to include an inextricable dimension of uncertainty and unpredictability
Interaction system involved in the decision-making process regarding sentimental partner selection, predictable in its choices? Linear Determinism, Randomness or Complexity? Each answer presents a different understanding of our lives, on interaction relationships we are involved in, with their way of working and evolution, up to regard, in a possible repercussion chain, issues that seem far from the main question, while instead representing an its further unfolding
Summary
The point at issue is not the incidence of personality—psychological factors in the partner’s choice but the linear determinism implicitly underlying conception of the couple system and mate selection process, which, pushes for admitting the existence of a victim’s type (women with insecure/avoidant personality coupling with ambivalent partner) and, to the extent that the field of the victimization is circumscribed just to one category of women, a risk of victimization which strongly depends on personality structure This implicit deterministic foundation derive from Bowlby’s Attachment Theory (duly systemized in his three volumes of Attachment and Loss—Bowlby (1969; 1973a; 1980) and already anticipated by his work in 1958, 1960a and 1960b (Bowlby, 1958; 1960a; 1960b), whose resonance was so vast to connect the Attachment Theory to psychoanalysis, to the ideas of Freud, Klein, and Winnicott who were not certainly unknown to Bowlby), of which Structural Coupling Theory represents a subsequent development.
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